Letters, March 14

Canada first

It’s time for columnist Peter McKenna (What is Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Cuba policy?, Think Tank, March 11) to give his head a shake. He literally defeats his own argument suggesting we stand up to the U.S. on the Cuba issue. Maybe with any of the previous presidents, but unfortunately not this one.

Like putting your own oxygen mask on before helping others, Canada needs to deal with renewing the CUSMA trade pact and the sector specific tariffs before helping Cuba. The “Made-in-Canada” Cuba policy worked in the 1960’s because the leadership on both sides were reasonable, professional stewards of their respective nations.

2026 is sadly anything but that. And I understand it’s a terrible thing being done to thousands of innocent Cubans, even if their government is not without some responsibility.

But for McKenna to lay the blame on Carney instead of Trump makes me question whether he’s been listening to one too many Poilievre speeches.

We as Canadians want to embrace our role on the world stage as peacemakers, peacekeepers, good Samaritans and good allies. But with a madman at the helm next door, the best course of action has been proven to be quietly working behind scenes. It’s not deliberately tweaking Trump’s nose whenever possible.

Keith Gordon

Winnipeg

What about drivers?

This city seemingly spends all of its money on rapid transit (empty buses) and bike paths (never plowed and barely used) and leaves fixing potholes on the streets used by cars and buses until they are big enough to damage vehicles and impact safety on the roads.

I never saw a single cyclist all winter long on Pembina Highway. Plowing of streets was horrible this winter and ruts were almost up to the undercarriage of most cars. In some cases driving your car was taken over by the direction of the ruts, which acted like rails on a trolley car to disaster.

You can’t take a right on a red light on major thoroughfares all year long, even in the dead of winter when the chance of there being a cyclist using the unplowed bike path is about as good as anybody outside of Ontario winning a major national lottery.

Message to city council: the joke’s over. This is not Southern California, or even Ontario, and most of the taxpayers footing most of the bill for taxes travel by car/truck and suffer major damage to their vehicle’s ball joints, undercarriages, suspensions, tie rods and tires because you don’t seem to be able to identify simple and obvious priorities.

Tax that.

John MacKinnon

Winnipeg

Where are parents?

As a retired educator, I read with interest the article in the March 12 edition entitled 15,000-plus students regularly skip school across Manitoba, leaked documents say.

My first reaction was one of amazement that an entire article could be written about student absenteeism without one mention of parents — the word is not to be seen.

No discussion of this problem can overlook the critical role parents play in getting children to school regularly. They are on the “front lines” every day and their actions and attitudes are directly reflected in their children.

New programs and initiatives might be useful, but, without parental support, it is unlikely that they will have any real positive influence. In addition, the article points out that the problem is most severe with Indigenous students — not a surprise to anyone working in education. The late Murray Sinclair, in reference to the problems caused by the residential schools, was quoted as saying that “education got us into this mess and education will get us out.” I would challenge our Indigenous leaders to mobilize their communities, deal with this problem locally and not wait for government programs to be implemented from outside.

Ross Wedlake

Winnipeg

Bought and paid for

If one ever needed a greater reason to suspect Donald Trump’s allegiance to Vladimir Putin, the decision to lift the sanctions on Russian oil ought to at least, give one pause for thought. Here’s the supposed leader of the ‘free world’, one who claimed to be liberating the oppressed in Iran whilst effectively doing little to extend the same concern to the people of the Ukraine.

The sanctions placed upon Russian oil were intended to maximize the economic impacts upon Russia’s capacity to further inflict the horrors it hass unleashed upon the Ukrainians and now, due to the gross miscalculations of Trump’s decision to wage war against Iran, Putin appears to have won yet again.

Either Trump has been played for the consummate fool or he’s well aware of the consequences of his actions and he’s content to be playing both sides of the equation provided it benefits him in the long run.

Some might say the Epstein files are playing a significant role in determining Trump’s decision making but what might be overlooked is the degree to which Putin, a former KGB professional, might well be in possession of the American president’s worst nightmare.

At some point, this flimsy excuse for an American administration is bound to implode, we simply need to be prepared for it.

Dan Donahue

Winnipeg

Making plans

I agree with Dan Lett (Tories’ finger-pointing on health care a bit rich, March 9) regarding the importance of a long-term health strategy.

Our government has health strategies — short-term and long-term. The broader and more comprehensive strategies are documented in the premier’s 2023 mandate letter to the minister of Health and in the 2025-2030 Shared Health Strategic Plan. Others, like the Lower Wait Times Strategy, are more specific. There is consistency between all of them.

They address important, complex, and longstanding problems. Many priorities and goals are, expectedly, the same as previous governments.

Previous reports of Manitoba’s chief public health officers have consistently priorized health inequalities and inequities and the importance of public health and primary health care strategies.

The first of these, in 2011, recommended that strategies should be multi-sectoral and should include measurable time-defined objectives, specific action plans, and transparent timely evaluations.

To ensure that strategies are based on values and expertise, it was recommended to expand networks of advisors to include a variety of stakeholders and advocates as well as more experts such as clinical epidemiologists and health economists. To ensure that strategies are based on local evidence, it was recommended that more timely and relevant Manitoba information be available, including data from a more developed and comprehensive electronic health record system.

These and other recommendations are reflected, to varying degrees, in the current strategies. I expect that as plans are further developed there will be more specific actions and objectives. That should further enable the monitoring of outcomes and the reassessment of strategies.

Joel Kettner

Winnipeg